1) THE GIFT OF LISTENING… But you must REALLY listen. No interrupting, no daydreaming, no planning your response. Just listening.

2) THE GIFT OF AFFECTION… Be generous with appropriate hugs, kisses, pats on the back and handholds. Let these small actions demonstrate the love you have for family and friends.

3) THE GIFT OF LAUGHTER… Clip cartoons. Share articles and funny stories. Your gift will say, “I love to laugh with you.”

4) THE GIFT OF A WRITTEN NOTE… It can be a simple “Thanks for the help” note or a full sonnet. A brief, handwritten note may be remembered for a lifetime, and may even change a life.

5) THE GIFT OF A COMPLEMENT… A simple and sincere, “You look great in red,” “You did a super job” or “That was a wonderful meal” can make someone’s day.

6) THE GIFT OF A FAVOR… Every day, go out of your way to do something kind.

7) THE GIFT OF SOLITUDE… There are times when we want nothing better than to be left alone. Be sensitive to those times and give the gift of solitude to others.

THE GIFT OF A CHEERFUL DISPOSITION… The easiest way to feel good is to extend a kind word to someone, really it’s not that hard to say, Hello or Thank You.

- Author Unknown

www.onecommunityranch.org

If you are interested in different ways of creating a sustainable community, this website may be of interest to you. Here’s some information I pulled off of their website (I hope they don’t mind, but I want to let their own words inspire you).

PURPOSE
To be the open-source blueprint for a sustainable civilization.

MISSION STATEMENT
To demonstrate a new way of living that addresses the pressing problems of today and prepares the world for the challenges of the next century through a duplicable model of large-scale sustainability for the complete human experience founded on a simple celebration of what we are capable of: completely sustainable lifestyle practices, inspired collaboration and global contribution, zero-waste living, and unconditional love for each other.

VISION STATEMENT
At One Community our vision is to transform the world by being the change we wish to see through a thriving culture of seamless cooperation, creativity, contribution, spiritual growth, meaningful relationships, personal expression, partnerships with like-minded businesses and individuals, and abundance that we happily share with the world.

As many of us know, it is time for our cultures and communities to come together in a new way, in a sustainable way. The One Community Ranch has a vision of how that can look. I hope you enjoy visiting their website and that you decide to help in some way to speed up the transition to a more aware way of being.

——-

• Barn stored straw bales for sale. Intermediate Wheatgrass (2′to 3′ stems).
• Have used this type on my own straw bale house.
• Contact Scott at 308-672-0877 or Scott@supremehay.com.
• Trucking can be arranged.

www.tm.org

I was recently talking with Gabriella about our business and we both realized just how lucky we are. There are a number of reasons that we consider ourselves lucky, actually a better way to say it is that we are grateful, but one big one came to the forefront during our conversation. It is that we love what we do. The more we spoke, the clearer it became that the reason we love what we do is that we are passionate about it. We truly believe in what we are doing and that makes our “work” not really work.

In this realization, I had the thought about other people in the world. How many of them are living their passion and how many are simply living to survive? So many people have gotten stuck in the machine of our culture, so stuck that they don’t even notice it anymore. They go to work each day at a job they don’t like so they can make enough money to pay for all their stuff (flat screen TVs in each room, multiple cars, a closet full of shoes, and so on). Beyond their stuff, a huge portion of their paycheck goes to pay a mortgage or rent on a house that’s bigger than they actually need. Wal-Mart and other corporations would have them believe that they are living the American Dream, but if they stop long enough to take a look from “outside their life” they may tell you otherwise. A friend of mine once asked me “are you thriving or surviving?” and that’s exactly the question I have for you.

How many of us can actually say that we love our work? How many are excited to show up at their job and know that their presence there is supporting a bigger picture view of what they want to accomplish in life? As Gandhi encouraged us to “be the change we wish to see in the world,” I wonder how many are actually heeding that call. Ask yourself if you are one of the few. If you are not, what’s stopping you?

I have heard from many people over the years (myself included) that the fear of not having enough (money, food, shelter, etc) can be crippling. The thinking sounds something like this: “I don’t like my job, but at least I can afford to buy food and have a nice house. Some day, I’ll do the things I truly want to do, but for now, I can’t risk losing my job.” It’s seemingly sound thinking, after all, who would want to risk losing their job; especially in the current sagging economy? But there is pervasive sadness in the words “some day.” It’s sad to me because so many people never reach that “some day.” The fear of loss is ALWAYS too big for them and so they stay trapped in their jobs, surviving, and wishing their life looked different somehow.

Taking a risk and stepping out into the world of thriving is scary, no doubt; however, when you find your passion and you fully connect to what you want to accomplish in life, everything will line up and you will find support from places you may not have known even existed. You may call it God, the Universe, Spirit, or any other name. It is the undeniable certainty that when you are aligned with your inner truth, obstacles will fall away and you will thrive. I have seen this happen over and over again in my own life and in the lives of my friends and family. To me, it’s simply true. Unfortunately, the machine of our society has got such a strong grip on so many people that many don’t have a clue what their passion even is. They may hope to find it (if they are awake enough to notice they are missing it), but with so much “noise” in the world, that can be hard to do.

A great way to start is to get grounded and quiet. The most obvious distraction that many people live with and actually seem to like having around is the TV. I know I tend to harp on TV a bit, but that’s because I truly see it as a poisonous part of our society meant to do one thing: encourage us to spend more money on stuff we don’t need. If you watch TV, like most Americans do, you probably have it on at least 5 hours a day, most likely in the evenings.  Just think of all the peaceful and productive time one could have, every day, if they didn’t drown out their passion and inner quiet with TV.

Here’s a simple (it may not seem it at first) way to start getting quiet: unplug your TV and don’t turn it back on for at least one month. Completely disconnect yourself from it. If you go to a bar or restaurant that has a TV on, sit so that you are not facing it. Do whatever you can to completely separate yourself from the culture of television for the month. In the time that you used to spend watching TV, do something “real.” That could be playing board games or cards with your family, learning to speak a new language, reading books, sitting quietly and simply being. The point is to get your feet back on the ground and to connect with “real life: yours.

With your feet on the ground and your inner landscape afforded a bit more space and quiet, see what comes up for you. Ask yourself, each day, what your passion is and what change you would like to see in the world. Draw a picture of what the perfect world would look like in your mind. Write down what it is that makes it so wonderful. Ask yourself what you can do to make this picture and story become a reality. Over time, or perhaps suddenly, you will find yourself awakening to your passion.

I believe there is more to truly landing in your passion than simply turning off your TV, but this is a starting point, a place to get your toes into the water. If you want to continue to journey, which I hope you do, I suggest taking a two-week vision quest (whatever that means to you) once you have found your initial calm. Perhaps sitting in the woods alone for two weeks with nothing but food, shelter and a place to write down your thoughts would be a good idea.  Perhaps taking an official vision quest with a respected leader while holding a specific intention is your path. There are many ways to continue this journey and to find your passion. Which one is right for you will become clear, once you get quiet.

What I want most for you right now is to simply inspire you to ask yourself if you are thriving or surviving. I hope that many of you will answer “thriving,” but I also know that even the most amazing people in my life have been stuck in the survival mode before. There’s no shame in it. It simply is what it is. If you are not where you want to be, ask yourself what’s in the way of you getting there. Once you start asking these questions, take time to really listen for the answers. When you find the answers, act on them. It may not be any easy journey and it will likely have its discomforts for you along the way, but the journey itself and the landing place you discover are both very much worth the effort.

Perhaps you recently started, or even completed, your own straw bale project. Did you get financing? Did you get a standard mortgage or did you have to get creative? What was your down payment percentage? Were you able to use local financing or did you have to shop around to a larger, more national scale market? Any and everything you can share with me is appreciated.My goal here is to create a document to help other people learn what it takes to finance their straw bale dream. I have lots of people ask me about finding specific lenders who will loan on straw bale. I can see the importance of having an updated list of lenders available (in other words, please supply me with names and contact information for those who provided your funding as well so I can list them in the document); however, I think it’s more important to know what details are involved in finding financing no matter where you live and who is immediately available to you.

My point is simply this: if I can help teach people how to get financing in any market, then the list of those willing to provide financing will continue to grow. If we stick with the same lenders over and over again, the list will ultimately shrink as policies and personnel change as we have seen over the last few years. It’s like the old saying: give a person a fish and they will have a meal. Teach a person to fish and they will never go hungry.

If you have details to offer, whether it is names and contact information for lenders, or details of what it took to get financing, please email me directly (Andrew@strawbale.com) and share that information. I look forward to compiling everything I get and putting it in one place for people to use.  The more recent your data, the better, by the way as I’ve found that even people I used to rely on for funding have stopped providing it in the “new” financing market.  Thanks for your help!

The reality is that 90% of the straw bale homes that are denied coverage are denied not because they are more dangerous than conventional homes but because the insurance agents, underwriters, and/or the insurance companies themselves don’t understand what they are dealing with when presented with a straw bale home.  They have al kinds of images in their heads about what it means to build a house out of straw and, yes, most of those images are related to the three little pigs. As unfunny as that is, it’s true.

So, here’s how you can help. If you have insurance on your straw bale home, please email me with as much detailed information as you can about how you made it happen. Send me your agent’s name and contact information, details about the application process and policy, and anything else you think would be helpful for others to know. Together we can provide people with a document that prepares them for a successful journey into the insurance world, something that has not been the norm for straw bale house owners over the years.

You can email me directly with your information (Andrew@strawbale.com). Thanks so much for sharing anything you can!

The last few months for me have been an incredible experience. As many of you know, my wife, 12-year-old daughter and I have been living the simple life in Mexico. In fact, most of that time has been spent living on a beach in a small (very small) tent trailer. In that time, we have come to see what things are important in life and which are simply not. The most obvious things of importance are family, health, happiness, food, clean water, and safe shelter. I think we can all agree that those things are important. Are there other things that land on your “important list?” There certainly could be. Here’s my list as it stands today (keep in mind that some may be doubles or subsets of previous items) and I’m keenly aware that this list changes almost daily as new joys enter my life.

That Which Is Important

• Love
• Family
• Health
• Joy
• Clean Water
• Safe Shelter
• Healthy Food
• Freedom (define this as you may as it means many things to me)
• An Open Heart
• An Open Mind
• A Sense of Humor
• A Willingness to Forgive and Be Forgiven
• Compassion
• Quiet (inside and out)
• Peace (inside and out)
• Clean Air
• Laughing
• Crying
• Listening
• Connection With Nature
• Money (This can be on either list depending on your relationship with it)

So what about the things we don’t need? As I mentioned at the end of my list, the M word can potentially find itself listed as something of importance or something that we don’t need. How do you relate to money? Do you see it as the root of all evil or something to help spread joy? Perhaps it’s somewhere in between for you. Like everything else on your lists (assuming you decide to take some time to create lists like these) I would hope that you really look at the truths underneath, in between, and around all of your beliefs. I use money as a trigger point here because it is so often surrounded by story and beliefs that come from generations past, the “norm” of community around us, or some other outside influence. So look at what’s true for you with regard to all things “important” and “not important.”

That Which Is Not Important

• TV
• A Big House
• Video Games
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Stuff (the things that commercials tell us we need)
• More than 2 or 3 Pairs of Shoes
• A Huge Wardrobe
• Double Master Suite Sinks
• A “Great Room”
• A Big Refrigerator (the extra food will only end up rotting)
• Anything you can’t actually use to make your life better (I mean truly better)

It’s actually really funny that as I write the list of things that are not important, I find that I can’t seem to describe the items I want to list. I wonder why. Perhaps it’s because I really don’t focus on those things anymore? I don’t know. The phrase that keeps coming to mind is “all the junk that our society says we need…when in fact, we really don’t need it.” I had an “aha” moment the other day when we spent a night at a hotel and watched TV. I was so disturbed by all of the commercials (not to mention the programming itself…what a waste of energy) as it seemed that everybody was trying to sell me something. My wife pointed out that this was of course true, as that is the purpose of commercials.

I know it seems silly, but somehow I had not really noticed that I was being bombarded with sales pitches all day long via TV, billboards, radio ads, and more. It had become part of my landscape. Now having been away from it for so long, it was painfully obvious. I bet that if you spent a month without any TV whatsoever, you too would have a similar experience. In fact, many of you may have just taken a deep breath of discomfort just in hearing the suggestion of not watching TV for a month. It has become such a part of so many people’s lives, that living without it seems scary. Why? What will you miss? What might happen to you if you don’t watch TV?

If you are inspired to ask yourself some tough questions, I hope that you will take the time and courage to do just that. Finding out for yourself what things are truly important is a first step to living a simple life. After all, if you don’t know what things really matter, it’s easy to lose focus and spread your attention to all kinds of things. That weakens your energy and your ability to create what you want in your life in the same way that spreading a tiny piece of butter over toast seems to make the butter simply disappear, not increase the flavor of the bread.

So, where to start? I offer this suggestion again: disconnect your TV for a month. Experience your life without it and see what happens. I think you’ll be amazed at how much time you have, especially in the evenings, to do things that inspire you. Read a book, learn a language, play with your family, or discover some other place to find joy in your life. With the TV gone, you’ll have lots of time to really explore other important questions. Maybe make yourself lists of your own. What’s really important? When you know the answer to that question, you can start lining up the details of your life to support those things and to let go of those that are not important and serve only as a distraction from that which really matters.

PAKSBAB is competing in the GISTech-I competition for innovative solutions to economic development problems. Please click on this link to watch our video and then vote for us by clicking on the YouTube “like” button!

Please help us spread the word. Forward this email, post the link on Facebook, Tweet it and/or or share it on your blog. Voting ends Nov. 17, 2011.

Thank you for your support!

Surkhab and Darcey

Surkhab Khan, C.O.O.
Darcey Messner Donovan, P.E., C.T.O.
Pakistan Straw Bale and Appropriate Building (PAKSBAB)
www.paksbab.org

I have, on two separate occasions, seen pick up trucks driving by with 2-string hay bales on the back. Clearly this means there are bales in the local area and baling machines that create them. I’m not suggesting that one should build with hay, as that would be a bad idea, especially with all the wandering cows; however, it does mean that the ability to make straw bales exists here. The next problem I see is the crops. I have not seen any grains growing here along the main road down. I’m almost all the way to the bottom of Baja and nothing yet. There could be grains grown outside of the main road and certainly further South than I am now as the microclimates and oasis conditions have been prominent on the way South thus far.

I truly hope to see that straw crops are available. If I see that, I’m left with the only issue that could stop the construction of straw bale homes: lack of knowledge on how to do so. That’s nothing new and is something I work with all the time. THAT I can handle. I would be happy to teach people how to build a bale home here. I truly believe that it would only take a few in each large community or town for others to get interested. With summer temperatures as high as they are here, one summer in a friend’s straw bale home could certainly convince most people, especially if they can be constructed in two important ways. 1) They would need to be affordable. We can do that. 2) They need to be built in a way that the local tradesmen understand. There is a lot of block work and plaster here. If we show the installation of bales as large blocks that simply get plastered, it’s a no brainer. We can do that.

So if you know anything about the crops in Baja Sur, please let me know. I would love to see this technology come here and help the local (whom I LOVE, by the way). Such an amazing group of people I have met so far. Smiles everywhere and a helping and generous hand at each corner.

It’s not easy to do, at least for me. I should mention that I decided to not only stop all the “extras” but also moved with my wife and 11-year-old daughter into a REALLY small pop up tent trailer and moved to Baja, Mexico. (There is a plan, yes, but the reality in the immediate time frame is that things are very taxing for us all.)

When all of the distractions go away, I find I’m left with a lot of time to think and feel. Think and feel the things that are otherwise blocked out by the ‘busyness’. Much of what I’m finding, thinking and feeling is amazing and beautiful and some of it is painful and ugly. I believe that we all have those places that are not so fun to look at or experience. I’m currently experiencing some of mine. I’m grateful for the opportunity to do so, no matter how uncomfortable it is, and I want to encourage us all to take the time in our lives to stop and experience life, for real, in its unedited, uncut version.